


A Winter Song for Wayward Souls

by chewysugar



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Kissing, Logan Needs A Hug, Logan's Past, New Year's Eve, Old Hollywood - Freeform, Self-Hatred, Sleeping Together, Slow Dancing, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12894885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: Of all the memories that Logan lost when he became nothing more than a weapon, this is his most precious--a Christmas spent with an angel.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know Logan is supposed to be hirsute--but for the purposes of this story, he's his taller incarnation.

A bodyguard.  
  
Four years in World War One; six years in World War Two—as a Canadian, I’m proud to say that I was there when our boys landed in Europe well before the Yankees did—and three years in the Korean War, and this is what I get: detail as a God damned bodyguard. Beats the ever loving fuck out of being one of the homeless boys sleeping under the freeway; and I can’t really say it’s better than being one of the boys who went back to the white picket fence and Apple pie only to find it all as meaningful as a sack of potatoes. Don’t really know what I was hoping for, ‘cept anything other than a bodyguard. A cop would have been nice, except that the pigs are about as corrupt in the City of Angels as the mobs. I would have taken even a firefighter or a construction worker.

But no.  
  
A bodyguard. And I have to wear a motherfucking suit and tie for it, as if keeping an eye on some Hollywood softie is as important as being part of Kennedy’s Secret Service.  
  
Oh, and to top it off, I’ve got this short little four eyed shit of the bigwig’s manager giving me the same kind of runaround I got in the Marines. Except my sergeant actually scared the piss out of some of the boys, quite literally at times. Never me—the guy earned my respect for not taking crap and also being as decorated as the Christmas tree in the swanky hotel’s lobby where Mister Magoo is currently giving me the third degree.  
  
“You don’t say jack about her to anyone.”  
  
Right. Her. I’m playing babysitter for some MGM broad over the jolly holidays because I can’t find work to save my life.  
  
I nod at the short, balding little toad, curling my fists at my sides. I’d like nothing more than for my claws to tear through the skin of my knuckles right now; but this little weasel hasn’t done much to deserve it besides be a pain in my ass.  
  
“You go where she tells you to go, unless you think it’s a bad call. She’s recovering, you see what I’m laying down? No nightclubs or bars or dives.”  
  
I nod again, wishing that the goddamn suit had been let in, oh I don’t know...everywhere?  
  
So I’m going to be playing chauffeur and bodyguard and sober companion for one of the many hopped up starlets in this city.

Nice Christmas present.

Part of me wonders if Mister Bald Spot is responsible for this dame’s problems. I may not have been pounding pavement in Los Angeles long, but I’ve heard enough about it, seen enough about it and pushed what little imagination I have enough to know the tragedy that sinks it’s fangs into the girls who look for their shot at stardom; this little prick seems just like the type to devour a nice Midwest girl’s dreams, gorge himself in her talent, and spit her back out with a drug dependency and a shattered self esteem.  
  
Again, my fingers flex.  
  
Jimmy Cagney looks me up and down again. I get the impression that he’s been strong-armed into even letting someone else spend time with his human commodity.  
  
“You got a woman here?”  
  
I shake my head.  
  
“Know any hookers?  
  
That came out of left field. I wonder if this piece of garbage is trying to test me—some bullshit masculinity ploy that those with Small Man Syndrome pull out when they’re small in the johnson and big in the ego.  
  
But I do know my fair share of hookers in LA, and other places. My blood runs as red as any other guy’s, and the places I frequent are a hive for ladies and gentlemen of the night. Part of me wants to tell this sanctimonious son of a bitch about the bad boys I’ve known—not Biblically, but socially—just to see him lose his shit.  
  
But I need this gig for something to do; for something to help pay my way back up North where I can hide.  
  
“Ain’t no man in The City of Angels who doesn’t know a scarlet woman or two.”  
  
“Keep their numbers handy,” the man says with a leer that I want to tear from his round face. “And you keep your hands to yourself. I don’t care if you dip it with some of those scarlet ladies or rub one out every twenty minutes; but you touch her, even a hair, and your ass is history.”  
  
I frown, and feel my pulse quicken. Before I can walk away or tell the prick to mind his own business—or that I don’t care who his washed up wannabe Harlow is or what she looks like—his face falters. There’s something sad about him—tired, almost, the way a lot of the boys and the nurses overseas looked when the blood and the bullets got under their skin.  
  
“She’s in good shape now—better than before. But she’s still smarting something fierce. Had a rough life of it, see? Maybe not as rough as someone in the Corps, but hard. Like a doll, she is. And if she breaks...” He shakes his head and looks at the lights of the Christmas tree for a long time. “It’s just until New Year’s Day, got it? Then she’s off to Florida to stay with an old friend. But she don’t want to be alone at Christmas—nobody should, really. And I can’t stay; I’ve got kids.” He looks me in the eye, something paternal and protective under that smarmy, L.A. shell. “Just be nice. Be everything she needs but nothing that she wants, okay? Might be a bonus in it for you if you keep her real happy.”  
  
“Yes sir.”  
  
The man rolls his eyes. “Sir. Who calls me sir in this town and lives?”  
  
I want to ask who this mystery woman is. I’m curious now, as a man—well, something like a man—and an employee. If she’s so important and fragile, then she oughta be with family, or at least a trained professional. I’m just a schlub with a resumé plucked from some tenement building near Echo Park: another nameless, for all it matters to anyone faceless, Vet who had the grace and skill at hustling pool to not end up in the streets or in the nuthouse.  
  
Before I can open my trap, my new charge’s possible employer sees something either over my shoulder or around me—hard to tell given how damn short he is. His face gets this kind of glow, and he brushes by me like I’m a feral dog begging for scraps—which I kind of am in this instance.  
  
“Hiya baby. You look beat. Ready for your vacation?”  
  
I look back out of curiosity. Mister Money has been playing this chick up like she’s a Woolworth’s heiress. Least I can get is my own opinion of her.  
  
Turns out she’s a little underwhelming and then some. She’s short—almost a head smaller than I am. She’s got a baby blue overcoat on, so big and baggy that it’s impossible to tell what her body really looks like. I wonder if that’s the point, though. Certainly she looks like the kind of woman who wants to squeak by without anyone looking at her. She’s got a scarf around her head and a pair of sunglasses on. Her whole get-up probably costs more than all my soldier’s pensions put together.

She gives the little bugger of a boss a quick hug, and my ever sensitive schnoz gets a whiff of expensive perfume—Chanel Number Five, if I had to really be specific. When you have as many hopelessly devoted women in your life as I have, you learn how to peg down the expensive tastes.  
  
“Marty. I’m just a little tired after the session, is all. How are the kids? I bet they’re looking forward to Christmas.”  
  
Her voice...it’s like a sad song from a long forgotten memory. I feel like I should know it, even if I’ve never spoken to her before. There’s something there, weary and weighed down, but still crawling towards some kind of hope. I think about a matchstick in a hurricane, the little flame at its end so close to sputtering out, but still putting up a fight.  
  
Mister Marty gives the girl a smile, and to give the man credit, it’s not perverse or possessive: he smiles like an uncle or a teacher looking at his favorite kid: loving and proud but distant—too distant to have influence or care when the chips are down, but close enough to worry.  
  
“The kids are swell, honey, just swell. Already got their lists made up.”  
  
“I should hope so. What is it, a week until the big day?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
Marty hovers a hand near her back—I make note of how he’s doing everything not to touch her. I wonder if it’s his preference or hers, or maybe a healthy cocktail of both.  
  
“Here’s your guard of honor. He’s promised to be on his best behavior, and he comes highly recommended.”  
  
I can barely roll my eyes at that. I landed this gig via word of mouth: someone who knew someone who was in the same platoon as someone who knew me passed my credentials along. Next thing I knew I was being interviewed by Marty and a short little woman with big bug-eye glasses and a sense of fake superiority. I couldn’t tell which one I’d wanted to turn my claws in most during the whole process. But I sat there and thought of Canada—of home and the chance to disappear into the bush. Lo and behold, the job had landed in my lap.  
  
“Meet Captain James Howlett. Second Marine Division in the Armed Forces. He don’t talk much. Figured you’d like that.”  
  
The woman cocks her head to the side. I get the sense that she’s not really looking me up and down—a rare for most people, given my appearance. She’s doesn’t even seem scared—no pheromones of fear or anxiety. Part of me, the part most tied to my cock, is even a little offended that there’s no base sexual interest. I could be a throw rug for all this lady cares.  
  
“How do you do?” She holds a hand out, palm down like a real movie star. I take it gently, surprised at how rough her fingers feel for a woman.  
  
“Very well, thank you.”  
  
“Captain Howlett has the car waiting with the heat on for you,” Marty says, all pins and needles to depart now that he’s dropped off his useless baggage. “If you need anything, you’ve got my number and Peggy’s number. There’s also Mister Greenson and all your other friends—  
  
“Yes. Thank you. It’s...it’s all very lovely.” She sounds bone weary. I stand back as she moves by me with a nod—moves as if she’s got a dozen demons clawing at her limbs and weighing her to the ground. I make to follow, but Marty grabs me by the arm.  
  
The bones in my hands start to crack; my knuckles burn red hot, the skin ready to tear in the event of my claws coming through. It’s not the unexpectedness of the hold—it’s the way the bastard does it, as if I’m dirt from the ghetto daring to look at his precious upper class world.  
  
“Not a finger,” he says warningly.  
  
I pull myself out of his grasp as easy as if he’s the scarecrow from _The Wizard of Oz_.  
  
“Right. Not a finger.” I want to say something smart—something that’ll get me fired, but I can’t. I’ll be living in the slums for sure; and while the idea of no rent or utilities is appealing, I’d rather be homeless in the wild spaces of British Columbia than here in the concrete hell of Los Angeles.  
  
I leave Marty, and the upper crust hotel he’d forced me to meet him at for Day One of my new job. Outside the air is balmy and the clouds are gray. It’s not right; it’s December, Christmas for the love of the Baby Jesus. Christmas is supposed to be cold and snowy, with big fat flakes and rides in one horse open sleighs. I can remember a time like that—a time anyone who resembles my physical age can only sing about, or watch Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney reenact on the big screen. I’m too far away from anything that used to bring me comfort, but that’s by choice. Running is something wild animals do best, and I ain’t about to quit when it sings in my blood.  
  
I find my charge sitting in the back seat. She doesn’t say anything as I climb in; doesn’t look my way or wave or even sneeze. She’s still got that overcoat and scarf and those big glasses on.  
  
“The radio, ma’am?” I ask, feeling like the world’s biggest schmuck. Eight years ago I was lugging shells at North Koreans. Now I’m here doing my best impression of Bitterman the Driver.  
  
Mystery Gal looks around, as if startled by my appearance in the seat I’m being paid to occupy.  
  
“Hm? Oh. Yes. That would be lovely, thank you.”  
  
Lovely. There’s that word again. It’s as if it’s the one thing she wants more than anything to hold close. I wonder just who she is—she’s an actress after all, but then again everyone in L.A. claims to be in pictures. If I saw her in anything, I sure don’t recognize her now. She ain’t old enough to be one of those sad biddies in the decline of their careers. Then again, her whole way of being makes it impossible for me to tell her age.  
  
But I don’t get paid to ask questions; I’m just here to drive and babysit.  
  
So I flick the radio on, grimacing at the sounds of Peggy Lee singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and drive. I drive us through the streets of Librea and to the address my good friend Marty gave me on a piece of index card. All the while my passenger stays silent, her eyes looking out the tinted glass, her full lips in a permanent frown.  
  
The buildings and shops give way to rolling hills; soon Los Angeles proper is obscured by trees. I drive through winding roads, passing by driveways where the rich and elite live. Finally, after a series of turns that puts us in the heart of the hillsides, far away from the lights and the broken dreams of L.A., I find the house printed on the stock paper.  
  
It’s not really big— but it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever lived in. Trees close around it on all sides, and for one split second I think back to Canada—to cabins surrounded by pines and spruce. Only this house is new, one of those butt-ugly modern things with too many angles and windows. 

I pull the car to the garage, get out and go around to the back passenger door, ready and rearing go make with the bag-taking and the yes ma’am’s.  
  
She opens the door first and slides out, one high heeled foot touching the pavement as if she’s the goddess of spring incarnate.  
  
“Thank God,” she says. “I thought I’d never get out of the beastly city. Oh, and don’t worry about the bags. I haven’t any. All my things were brought up. This is Marty’s place, you know. One of them anyway. He has another home back in Indiana where his family lives. This place is all business. But he’s lending it to me; he can be quite a bother sometimes but he really is a good person.”  
  
I follow her as she walks through the front door and into a hall as big as one floor of the tenement home I’ve lived in for the last two years. My new charge has gone from keeping mum to singing Camptown Ladies; it’s like something took over her on the drive. Usually I hate it when people don’t keep a lid on it; and really this lady is talking about nothing, but for some reason I don’t mind it so much.  
  
“Brother,” she sighs, looking around at the paintings that line the walls. “All this and nobody to share it with besides agents, athletes and movie stars. Say, is it warm in here or is it just me?”  
  
The bulky blue overcoat slips from her shoulders and I nearly walk into the hat stand.

Her body is...there’s no way to even describe it. Hot is too tack, too rough. Sure she’s shapely, with curves in places a man well acquainted with the female anatomy wasn’t even aware of. But she carries it so damn strangely—like she knows she’s got it but doesn’t think a thing of it.  
  
Easy. That’s what. An easy kind of sensuality, like something carved by nature. The black sweater clings to her torso, hugging her breasts and her flat stomach and slender waist. But the pants she has on fill out at the hips ever so slightly.  
  
I notice myself staring and quickly look at the ceiling.  
  
“Whatever suits you. If it’s too warm I can fiddle with the furnace. I have some mechanic experience.”  
  
“I think Marty would skin you alive if you did anything of the kind. He loves this house more than his children, which is why they are not nor have they ever occupied it.”  
  
“I’ll leave it alone then.”  
  
She tilts her head, watching me, still with those glasses and scarf hiding most of her features.  
  
“Captain Howlett—  
  
“I’m not much of a captain anymore, ma’am.”  
  
“And I’m not much of a ma’am, Captain.”  
  
I clear my throat. “James will do.”  
  
“James is so common. How about Jimmy?”  
  
I grunt, liking the way the name sounds on her lips but not wanting to look like a fool and give that fact away. I’m starting to feel like some stupid fifteen year old kid, and I don’t like it.  
  
“Didn’t catch that.” She’s smiling at me...teasing me.  
  
“Alright, alright. Jimmy. What should I call you?”  
  
One of her perfectly trimmed eyebrows quirks. “Marty didn’t tell you who I was, did he?”  
  
“No.” Great. So she’s one of them full-of-herself starlets. Just what I need over the jolly holidays.  
  
But if anything she looks even happier to hear that. She takes the scarf from around her head and pulls the sunglasses off with careless ease.  
  
I’ve seen amazing shit in my long life; I _am_ amazing shit when the chips are down. If it’s not the claws made out of my own bones, it’s the healing factor; if it’s not the healing, it’s the animal instinct and senses. I’ve known men and women who would make freak shows and creature features look as ordinary as a tabby cat. I’ve seen the worst that ordinary has to offer—gaunt faces in gas chambers and innocent people worked to the bone.  
  
But all it takes is for that face to be revealed—for this guileless, haunted blue eyes to look into mine; for those lips to smile at how shocked I look; and for that hair—white-blonde as snow—to tumble from the confines of its scarf for me to feel like I’ve been struck nuclear lightning.  
  
And all it takes is for her to say, “Call me Marilyn, Jimmy,” for me to feel like I just walked into The Twilight Zone.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes I feel like a big ugly hunk of rock out in the ocean: I get battered by the wind and the surf and everything just starts falling apart, but I’m still there. For all I know, I will be until the end of time. The bigger pieces that break off are usually on account of the bigger traumas: my claws, my family, the few people I ever called lover. They say that it builds you up, like a scar. You get cut down to size and it hurts, but then you heal, and you know better next time.  
  
As someone well acquainted with healing, I never bought into that snake-oil pitch. Your body heals, and in my case, heals itself, and you’re still alive in most cases. But the skin is never quite the same if you’re lucky enough to walk away from whatever beat you down.  
  
Point is, I’ve been rundown more than my fair share of times. I can’t listen to a moving piece of music the same way that I used to, or see a piece of art or watch a baby learn to walk without the shades of cynicism pulled over my eyes. But everyone once in a while, I surprise myself when the world surprises me: I can still find some kind of agate in the middle of the rough edges.  
  
I just never expected I’d find it when looking at the face of the most famous and beautiful woman in the world. I’ve seen her on billboards and movie posters; I’ve heard her voice on the radio and even seen her from afar during her USO show in Korea. But the genuine article?  
  
Indescribable.  
  
All I can say is that the second it clicks in my mind—the way she walked and talked without the cameras, and the way she looked at me now—is that I immediately wanted to protect her. It was the surrealist feeling; I’m no Prince Charming; I’m not even Sir Lancelot or Humphrey Bogart when you get down to brass tacks. But that feeling took hold of me so damn tightly that it almost choked me.  
  
“You’re...”  
  
Marilyn laughs, a sound like a crescendo in some epic, tragic musical masterpiece.  
  
“Yes. I am. And you get to look after my sorry self for the next twelve days. You don’t look terribly thrilled; I can’t say my last bodyguard was the same. He could barely string two words together. Of course, he was about nineteen. You must be at least thirty.”  
  
I wanted to tell her that I was born during the Harrison administration; of course she won’t believe me. I don’t even know how old I am anymore. My body capped off somewhere just shy of proper middle age.  
  
I clear my throat. “Ten years off.”  
  
Marilyn’s eyes sparkle. She turns on her heel and walks, not wiggles, through the hall and into what I have to guess is the living room. The walls are paneled in dark oak; the carpet is plush and green; big windows as tall and wide as the walls overlook a back patio and a pool. It looks like a home, and even though it isn’t Marilyn’s, she walking through it like she’s been here her whole life. I wonder if she’s in the habit of doing that—finding whatever home she can and claiming it, like a stray cat.  
  
“Forty? Well that’s not bad at all. Forty is prime. Devoon, I believe is what darling Jayne Mansfield would call it.”  
  
I don’t know what to say. It’s Marilyn Monroe—an unexpected Marilyn Monroe, whom I spent twenty-five minutes in a car with none the wiser. When I was in Korea I had listen to all the guys talking about her—talking like she was a Corvette or a steak dinner: what they’d like to do to her, what she’d do to them. More than once I came across a private playing with his privates a while looking at that old Playboy spread Marilyn did for Hef. Looking back on those instances now that I’m all but floating after the genuine article feels the worst kind of crass—almost disgusting. 

She’s a flesh and blood woman, and completely disarming.  
  
“Are you usually this taciturn, Jimmy? Or is that a part of being forty that I have to look forward to?” She heads for the varnished bar near the varnished wall, then pauses, deliberating for a moment. Marty told me to keep an eye on Marilyn, but it feels like it’s out of my bounds to tell her what to do. In any event, she doesn’t go for the liquor in the big class case—she reaches for a bottle of mineral water, almost scowling at having to do so.  
  
I find my voice; I don’t know why, but I do.  
  
“Forty didn’t seem to bother Miss Schatze Page any from what I remember.”  
  
Marilyn grins and brings the mineral water to her lips. Someone on this Earth making the act of drinking carbonated, tasteless water look sublime is almost too unreal for me to process.  
  
“ _How to Marry a Millionaire_ ,” she says. “One of my better performances according to nearly every newspaper this side of the Golden Gate Bridge.”  
  
“I think it was. For comedy anyway.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
I don’t make good with the talking on the best of days. What with the interview with Marty and today, I’ve probably spoken more words in the last week than I have the last ten years.  
  
I talk slowly, standing in the middle of the room while Marilyn continues to sip her tonic water, “Well. I think that you—Pola was the character, yeah?”  
  
“Pola Debivoise.” Marilyn modulates her voice, making it sound breathless and sultry and like every sixteen year old’s wet dream, every other man’s jerk off fantasy and every woman’s aspiration.  
  
I chuckle, despite the fact that that voice made blood rush south. “Pola. She wasn’t all that different from _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ —Lorelei Lee, right?”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“But Pola to me was just a sweetheart. Lorelei was kind of mean to me—‘cause of how she acted superior. But Pola was kind, and there was no act of being the dumb blonde. A sweetheart, that’s what.”  
  
Marilyn smiles, and I feel like I just won some kind of lottery. But again, I wonder how many people have felt that rush: _I made Marilyn Monroe smile, how’s your Saturday going, Mac?_  
  
“I loved that one,” she sighs, almost sad. “Working on it. Just after _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_. It wasn’t as hard with three girls my age sharing the screen. Especially Lauren. She’s an absolute doll, that woman. Smart as a whip and so talented. And Betty—my own personal idol. She made some of the men on set blush with the things she said, and she never was too busy to go out for a cherry soda or to a show.” She sighs again, and I want to take her in my arms, and run far away at the same time. I’m a hideous beast compared to her, and this ain’t no fairy tale.  
  
“Lauren and Betty were so helpful, so good. We thought we’d be friends forever, the way stupid young girls do. But they’re both so busy now. All of my actor friends are.”  
  
She isn’t talking about herself; she didn’t mention her performance—just the other actresses. It’s so natural, this praise of others—so unlike a man. Men have to boast; men have to whip it out and see who’s is longest; men have to be the heroes of the war.  
  
Again I’m seized by the need to offer her some kind of comfort. But she’s so beautiful on the outside and so delicate on the inside, like a breakable doll. I’d crack her, make her dirty; I feel like I already am, my hairy body and unkempt hair an offense to her beauty. I smoke cigars; she probably crushes out lipstick stained cigarettes. I’ve shed blood and waded through it; Marilyn’s never done a mean thing in her life. I’m a freak; she’s...something special.  
  
Marilyn finishes her tonic water, then stretches, yawning like a worn out queen cat. “Five-thirty. It’s too early for bed, don’t you think? But I really am tired.” She rounds the bar and then threads her arm through mine; I flinch a little, scared that she’ll end up stained or infected with all the damage I have in me.  
  
Marilyn raises her brows. “Why Jimmy—you’re not afraid of me are you?”  
  
“No. Just not used to people being so forward with me.”  
  
She laughs that hundred miles an hour and Christmas morning laugh again. “Well, I am. It’s a remarkable insulator against feeling safe, let me tell you that much.”  
  
I let her lead me from the living room; I can feel her body, how warm and soft it is. That Chanel is doing a number on my sense of smell, and I’m grateful that she isn’t looking down at that moment.

Just before we leave the living room, she stops and turns back, her face screwed up in another one of those something-isn’t-right-here frowns.  
  
Then she snaps her fingers.  
  
“A Christmas tree. That’s what it is. This place is starving for Christmas decorations.” She squeezes my arm. “Jimmy, I’d like to go on a holiday shopping trip tomorrow.”  
  
And, finding myself smiling, I nod.  
  
Because what kind of heartless dickstain of humanity could deny Marilyn Monroe anything?


	3. Chapter 3

Color me surprised that I can go out in public in Los Angeles with Marilyn Monroe and have nobody give us a sideways glance. She isn’t even wearing that headscarf or sunglasses—just her face and a smile that speaks a million words.  
  
She never leaves my side as we hit up Rodeo. Again she surprises me by not going for the ritziest decorations. It shouldn’t shock me; her finances aren’t what they used to be thanks to the studio cannibals eating her alive. I know her reputation of late isn’t what it used to be either—but I start to understand on that first full day with her that she’s as multifaceted as the diamonds she so famously sang about.  
  
We go to lunch together at a diner—a greasy, corner diner that smells of French fry oil, coffee and cigarettes. It’s my kind of place, and I think Marilyn knows it.  
  
“You haven’t asked me yet.” She’s breathless with the excitement from her purchases, now sitting by her feet.  
  
I grunt, stabbing a fry into a pile of ketchup.  
  
“Like a caveman.” Marilyn puts on a gruff face, scrunching her lips and nose and wrinkling her brow. “Me man; you woman. Me build fire. Me kill bird.”  
  
“Aw geez. What haven’t I asked you?”  
  
“Why nobody’s watching us.”  
  
“Guess I didn’t think you’d be really forthcoming.”  
  
“So you don’t want me to be her?”  
  
No. I don’t. It’s so strange—most people would be going gaga for the wiggle and the breathy baby talk. Anyone whose anyone would want to be spotted arm in arm with the Blonde Bombshell.  
  
I raise my mug of black coffee in a toast. “You be whoever you want. I’ll be right there watching and ready to help.” I meant to say “ready to help do my job,” but it sounds so formal—too formal.  
  
Marilyn sighs and looks into the small cup of tea she ordered. “Whoever I want to be, huh? Well how about I be someone who wants to enjoy a quiet holiday with her handsome new bodyguard.”  
  
“I ain’t handsome, Marilyn.”  
  
She leans across the table. I freeze, dumbfounded as she take the sides of my jaw in her hand. She turns my face this way and that, examining me like a military physician.  
  
“Hmm...strong jaw...good cheek bones...not an ounce of fat, although why that bothers some people I’ll never know. Your nose is nice and angular, almost like in that picture of Sitting Bull. And your eyes...” She holds my gaze, and the coffee and greasy donut I ate turn over in my stomach. “Your eyes are the most beautiful shade of brown...like a shot of pure honey.”  
  
She lets my face go, watching me like I’m a movie screen. I pray to God that she isn’t able see my life the way the world has seen hers.  
  
“You’ve seen a lot, huh Jimmy? You were in the war, weren’t you? That’s what Marty said.”  
  
Again, I find something blocking my throat. I don’t want to be the tongue tied sap, not just because she’s Marilyn Monroe, but because she’s a human being; she’s talking to me, not repulsed by me or scared or looking for a quick fix between the sheets. I gulp down my coffee to give my vocal chords some much needed lubrication.  
  
“That’s right. Korea.”  
  
“And since you’re forty, you were probably in the Big War, too. Weren’t you?”  
  
I nod again, and she smiles that sad lost goddess of spring smiles again before looking back into her tea. I can’t stand the silence, not just because I know she’s drowning in thought, but because I am too. I can hear every shell that went off behind me; feel the blood of boys too young to die cover my fingers; and above all else, I can feel the futility of the whole thing. There’s never been a war that needed to be fought, because people don’t need to get to the point where wars break out. But they do; they’re always looking for an excuse to hurt each other, and when it hits the fan, I’m the best guy for the job.  
  
“Was it awful? In Europe, I mean.” Marilyn glances at me with those blue as winter ice eyes.  
  
I breathe in. I’m jonesing for a cigar, but I don’t want to stink up our booth, not when the smell of her is so fucking incredible—so feminine and soft and soothing.  
  
“It was. Can’t imagine anything worse. Not even them Vincent Price flicks come close to how horrible people can be—the kinda things they can do. And so many of the good boys and girls over there...” I close my eyes. They were friends at times, and always allies. Every loss of limb or life cut me to the bone, chipped away at that ocean rock. And even coming home didn’t offer the miracle cure for many of them.  
  
“You’re brave, Jimmy Howlett. And good. Not many people would voluntarily jump ship and fight in two wars.”  
  
I’ve fought in more than she’ll ever know—can ever know. I’m something she’ll never understand, and I hate myself for wanting her to; she’s just a woman, and I’m barely a man. We won’t see each other after the holidays, and this’ll be just another memory for me to run away from.  
  
But I figure that’s the thing about Marilyn—the real Marilyn, sitting across from me in a red sweater with a cup of plain earl grey tea: she makes people want to believe in something; their redemption, or maybe just that someone so battered can be so good.  
  
“You’re a hero too, you know.”  
  
Marilyn scoffs. “Me. The closest I ever got to any war was working in a munitions factory, and now look at me. Barely enough to keep my own body and soul alive at times, let alone anyone else’s.”  
  
“That’s not all there is to you. Not by a long shot. Sure you didn’t storm Normandy or Korea. But I didn’t see Vivien Leigh or Ava Gardner gracing the troops with their presence. People love you.”  
  
“For the 35-22-35 maybe.”  
  
“Not all the time.” I have to cheer her up, I need to cheer her up—need to get her away from this dark cloud I can smell moving in over her. “I ain’t speaking for anyone else right now. I did hear a lot of the boys overseas talking about you—about how your pictures were always a slice of America in the middle of Korea. But I ain’t American. I’m Canadian, and I still thought that there was something worth it whenever I saw your face or heard your voice.”  
  
She isn’t looking at me—she’s staring at the chipped table, her tea forgotten. I hope I’ve gotten through to her, made her see that anything unkind she thinks about herself isn’t worth it’s salt.  
  
But she just shakes her head.  
  
“You’re sweet, Jimmy. But I’m not an angel.” She looks into one of the bags at her feet. “But there’s an angel in there that needs to go on top of the tree tonight. What say we get on back to our little castle in the hill?”  
  
I recognize deflection from a mile away; I want to kick myself for having tried to do the same thing every other guy in her life has probably done. It feels hot, blistering, like swallowing acid.  
  
I make a trip to the john before we leave the diner; I have to get my head clear, have to remind myself what I am and what it is that I’m really doing it for. Canada; home; money—a chance to run. I’m a glutton for punishment, so I look long and hard at myself in the mirror. I can’t understand for the life of me why Marilyn thinks I’m so good, or handsome. Maybe if she sees me without my hair slicked back with Vitalis. Even now, well groomed for my standards, my face looks too rough, too weathered. The odds of it being her thinking me some kinda stand-in for DiMaggio are slim—even old Joe was something of a looker from a different angle.  
  
She’s kidding herself; I’m kidding myself for that matter. We’ve been together for only a day and a bit; already she’s gotten under my skin. Already I’m trying to get under hers, and that’s not good for either of us.  
  
I blast the water cold and rub my face with it.  
  
I have to keep things on a level; have to keep my distance somehow, no matter how impossible it is for me to do so.  
  
She’s waiting in the car, her purchases all strewn along the floor of the backseat. I make myself keep my eyes on the road and the road only, even when she reaches past me at a red light to change the radio station. My blood is on fire, and my skin prickling; I wish nothing more than to pull over and show her what it is that I am—to scare her away for her own good.  
  
The exertion takes something out of me; by the time we make it to the house on it’s secluded little hill, it’s plain as daylight that I’m doing a piss poor job of staying Switzerland.  
  
“You’re sweating, Jimmy.” Marilyn pauses as I help her take the bags from the back seat. “Was it too warm in the car? You should have said something! I can handle a little cold.”  
  
“It’s nothing. Just a little feverish. Probably from the burger.”  
  
Marilyn takes the rest of the bags, kicks the door closed with her high-heeled foot. “Go have a shower. Use mine; I stayed in that little broom closet of a guest bedroom once—it’s practically barbaric.”  
  
“Marilyn, really I—“  
  
Marilyn rises one eyebrow. “Don’t make me ask you as your employer, Captain. You’re in bad shape right now. Besides, we can’t have you sweating all over Marty’s ermine rug.”  
  
“But the decorations—  
  
“Are you adverse to following orders now you’re out of the army?”  
  
“Just not used to people looking out for me.”  
  
Marilyn sighs, her eyes going sad, and goddamn it if I don’t want to find a way to smooth all this over and take that sadness away. “Jimmy...please, for my peace of mind, clean yourself off. I can set up the tree; it’s one of those plastic abominations, and the instructions are printed in nice big, bold English for stupid birds like me.”  
  
“You’re not stupid!”  
  
“Hah! I knew that would get your goat.”  
  
I glower at her as we enter the house. “You tricked me, darlin’. I’m hurt.”  
  
“Well I’m hurt that you would rather sweat through your business clothes than take a simple shower.” She turns and fixes me with a big-eyes, innocent damsel look. “Please?”  
  
She’s pulling a ploy on me—an actress trick she probably picked up from Strasberg. And unfortunately it works, even though I don’t want it to.  
  
So it comes to pass that I find myself walking through the room lent out to her—there are suitcases open in the floor. She hasn’t bothered to unpack and it strikes me as so fucking sad that she’s so used to being bandied about that she doesn’t want to make this room hers. Then I remember that she’s only been here for one day.  
  
The shower in my guest room is better than most I’ve ever had; but the one in Marilyn’s borrowed room is nothing short of an oasis. I take a little too long enjoying the space and the jet of hot water. Getting the sweat and grease off my skin feels better than the most skilled blowjob. The only problem is that the whole bathroom smells of her—her skin and her shampoo and that Chanel Number Five. I refuse to let my body react, but it’s stronger than I am.  
  
Still, mind over muscle is something I’ve learned how to master in the years since I first got my claws. I can’t breathe too deep because I’ll just smell her, so I make my mind go blank. I think about a chessboard, and all the thoughts and feelings I have surrounded by her scent just pieces moving across it. I don’t have to listen, I don’t have to react.  
  
Eventually, I calm my chubby enough to be able to shut the water off and decide now’s as good a time as any to rejoin Marilyn.  
  
I frown when I step into the bathroom.  
  
The suit Marty forced me into is nowhere in sight; instead there’s a neatly folded button up long sleeve and a pair of comfortable pants and socks. My hands shake a little as I approach; I can smell her all over them—and there’s a small piece of paper on the top with a lipstick stain on it.  
  
On the back there’s a note: _You can’t wear that penguin suit the entire time we’re here_ —M  
  
She must have got it when we were out shopping today. Her own damn money, spent on a mutt like me.  
  
Part of me most connected to self-hatred wants to tell her to take it back. But she did it out of kindness—even if it was for me. And it feels smooth as Japanese silk on my skin, even if a bit itchy. Marilyn doesn’t know how hairy I am—not that I’m gunning to show her ever. She even pegged my size down.  
  
Nobody has ever done something like this for me before. Sure I’ve had friends at times who’ve bought me a round; I’ve had women who’ve treated me like a gigolo and got me things they want to see me wear—mostly to make them look better. But this isn’t necessary—just something she’d do for her lowly bodyguard.  
  
I shake my head as I leave the bathroom, bedroom and her smell behind.  
  
If ever I was in over my head, it was now. And, as I come into the living room and see Marilyn hanging red and gold baubles on the tree, with that light in her eyes that was just as innocent as it was haunted, I realize that I don’t care.


	4. Chapter 4

I’m not used to any of this; I’m not used to having a place as nice as this; I’m not used to someone who isn’t under orders being in my company. I’m not used to Christmas lights or tinsel or Bing Crosby on the stereo. I’m used to dirt, sweat, blood and other bodily fluids not worth mentioning in polite company.

Being around her is like having some kind of ghost with me: beautiful, ethereal; a vision of something better than what we’ve got on this tired little hunk of rock and water. But still tragic; still unbelievably sad.

Marilyn doesn’t show that sadness easily; after only four days decking the halls with boughs of cheap plastic holly and watching Christmas specials on Marty’s television, I realize that she could probably force herself to look happy under threat of death.

Of course, that’s something I’ll never master. Too much wasted energy.

For her though? I kind of try.

She’s so damn pleased by the way we turn Marty’s little slice of modern architecture into something halfway cozy and festive; every song on the radio and showing of _Miracle on 34 th Street_ makes her lips curve in satisfaction.

“I know her,” she tells me one evening as we watch little Susan pluck at Kris Kringle’s whiskers. “Natalie, I mean. It was just before this we did a picture together. She’s an absolute doll. I hear she’s going to be in _West Side Story_.”

It’s been cool all day; I’ve been smelling rain since three in the afternoon. We haven’t left the house since the day we bought all the garland and lights snaking around the walls. It’s amazing that she hasn’t gotten cabin fever after this long being cooped up with me of all people. We’ve settled into something like a routine: whoever wakes up first—usually me—puts on something for breakfast; then there’s coffee and the morning news followed by whatever in the hell else happens.

Through it all I’ve been waiting for her to slip up the way Marty warned me she might. The liquor cabinet is open, after all—I find it pretty screwed up that Marty left all his booze out when he knew Marilyn would be staying here with a stranger. I know she’s also got those little blue pills that the studios force on all their “uncontrollable” actresses; but she’s lucid, sober as a fiddle, and partakes of cigarettes at the worst.

“She’s a dream,” Marilyn continues. “But her mother is the stuff of nightmares. I only met the woman once when we were doing _Scudda Hoo, Scudda Hey_ and let me tell you, I almost ran away with Natalie.” She’s curled on the big arm chair like a cat, all fuzzy sweater and comfortable pants. “My mother was a bit of a case to. Mental, you know. Some people have said that I inherited it, but there’s no proof that it works that way.”

“Don’t seem mental to me.”

“Oh, Jimmy. Stop trying to make me feel better.” She throws me a lazy smile. “You know I was locked up once. It was all over the papers.”

I grit my teeth so hard, I’m surprised one of them doesn’t snap off. I remember the papers detailing Marilyn’s stay in a mental hospital earlier that year well enough—as if she ever needed it. Old Joe DiMaggio had come to her rescue—her real knight in shining armor.

I’m not about to ask; I don’t need to know. But this is common ground that we share, after all.

“I was once.” I keep my eyes on the black and white fuzz of the movie, corny even by the standards of 1961.

“You’re joshing me, right?”

“No. Was out in the rough for a while when I was young. Bunch of people found me and thought I was some rabid beast, so they threw me in the choke.”

That had been back in the early 1900’s, back when they could still cut into a person’s brain and call it medical help. Fortunately for me, I’d been spared that indignity, not that it would have done much in way of harm—I’ve healed worse than a slit scalp. But it would have raised a lot more questions and probably ended in disaster had it come to that.

Marilyn sits up, her lips parted.

“How old were you? Where were your parents?”

“Let’s see…it was a bit before I got drafted. Must have been about seventeen. And my parents were…gone by then.” My old man dead and my mother who only knew. It’s such a long time ago, but the memory still makes my knuckles tingle—the first time the bones came out had been when I’d killed the pig-fuck who’d done my old man in.

“But you got out. You had to, to have fought in Europe.”

“I did.” The escape had been easier then when I’d run away from the circus—no blood, no claws or screams. I’d still been relatively young, having not peaked at the age when my body had stopped…well, aging. It had been easy as pie to throw on the puppy dog eyes and convince one of the nurses to let me go, both with a sob story and a healthy dose of my body. Not that the indignity had been easy to digest.

“How?”

I can’t tell her how; she’s already on the cusp of sympathy for me.

“Old family friend convinced them I wasn’t off my nut. They took some time, then decided I wasn’t dangerous. ‘Course, it was almost right to military training afterwards.”

Marilyn frowns. “Are you certain that you’re forty?”

I blink. “Uh…yeah. Why?”

“Well if you were that young, and then you went to fight in World War Two right after…”

Crap.

She’s got me cornered.

There’s only one way out of this that won’t sound too vague.

“I was there for a long time, darlin’. Years.”

“Oh.” Her voice breaks; her eyes get bright, and before I know it she’s sliding off the arm chair and coming to sit next to me. “Jimmy…”

“It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit it’s not.”

That makes me look her full in the face. She smiles a little; I must look too surprised for there not to be some kind of levity in all this.

“What? Don’t think me capable of cussing?” 

“It’s just…I’ve never heard it from you before.”

“Talk to the people on the set of _The Misfits_ ; I can keep up with the best of them.” Her fingers close around my wrist; I try my damndest to focus on little Natalie Wood on the TV, but it’s futile. Marilyn is so damn overpowering, even though she’s as soft as snow.

“You’re tough,” she says. “Like a wolf. You haven’t lived easy; too many wars, and now staying in a madhouse for years. I was only in one for days and it still stings like a wasp.”

“You’re putting me on a pedestal, darlin’. I ain’t special.”

“Hey now, that’s supposed to be my line.”

“Guess I’m not that great of a scene partner.”

“You’re alright by me, Jimmy.”

She’s touching my hand, massaging my knuckles. I don’t want her to feel my bones—I’m all but pissing myself over my claws coming unsheathed and terrifying her, or God forbid, hurting her. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ever accidentally made someone so lovely and fragile bleed by accident.

Again, she’s got this way of making me actually believe that there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s as if she can’t stand anyone else having more anguish than she does, and that plum breaks my heart in two.

For a long while, she sits there, leans her head against my arm as she continues to stroke the skin of my hand. The movie plays on, the message of believing in something greater than what we see trying to butt its way into my chest.

Finally, Marilyn sighs, and slowly gets to her feet.

“Two days until Christmas,” she says. “I guess I oughta to the responsible thing and call all my loved ones and wish them the compliments of the season.”

I grunt a reply; my skin is prickling from the presence of her, aching from her absence. Just when I thought I’d gotten used to that soft smell of her, it wreaks havoc on me again.

And when she leans down and places a kiss on the top of my head, it’s all I can do to not howl from something as overwhelming as a bomb going off; I want to turn and crush her to me; I want to run as fast and far as a I can; I want to roar from how unfair this all is to the both of us.

But something in me—something I thought I lost somewhere between the Yukon and Korea—lets me look her in the face and give her something like a grateful little grin.

“There,” she sighs, almost triumphantly. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Alright, alright.” I roll my eyes. “Don’t expect it to happen again.”

“Don’t take offense if I do. Goodnight, Jimmy. Don’t let the rain keep you up.”

I look out the window. It _is_ raining now, and that only serves to make me feel even further out of my element. It’s almost Christmas Eve—it should be snowing; I should be chopping firewood and looking forward to passing the special day as just another Thursday or Friday or whatever the hell day of the week it falls on this year.

But here I am, and there I have it.

The television goes to static. I click it off, plunging the living room into near darkness except for the glow of the Christmas tree in the corner. Even though she’s just down the hall and around the corner, the place feels empty without Marilyn there—lifeless almost. Her scent is still tickling at my nose, still making my body react like some over-eager kid. I need to clear my head; I haven’t done a thing to relieve any kind of longing since I came to this place; it wouldn’t be out of line with what Marty told me not to do—there’s nothing wrong with keeping my hands on myself. But it feels so wrong to be doing it as a result of her—profane, and the worst kind of insulting.

I cross the living room and open the back door to the patio. The smell of the rain and the wet trees drowns out the Chanel; it would almost be soothing if it weren’t for the acrid tang of the pollution of Los Angeles.

And for something else that scratches at my nose and raises my hackles.

Something covered in sweat and smoke.

I low growl escapes my throat. I’m outside in a matter of seconds, the light drizzle soaking through my shirt. My bare feet move silently like the predator I am at heart, stepping through the puddles that have pooled over the stone of the patio.

I can smell the man—his greed and lust. The breeze carries his location to me like a beacon; and even if it hadn’t, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to know exactly where the bastard is: skulking in the shrubbery outside her bedroom window.

I see him through the darkness; I hear his breathing, and the catch as he loads a roll of film into the camera. He’s not your typical fare for a paparazzi; he’s tall, young—probably a beat looking for some quick Christmas cash at the loss of someone else’s privacy.

I walk quietly to him; he doesn’t see me, too focused on the window of Marilyn’s bedroom. The lights are down; she’s either asleep or in the shower. If it were anyone else I’d just satisfy myself with calling a quick shout and scaring him off, but this son of a bitch is violating the space of someone who’s already had so much stripped away.

So I creep behind him, and grab him by the back of his jacket. He doesn’t even have time to gasp before I lift him off his feet and throw him six feet across the lawn. He keeps his hand around his camera—his bread and butter. That only pisses me off all the more. I pounce, seizing the camera and crushing it in my fist.

The man’s eyes go wide even as he scrambles off his ass. “What the fuck, man!? I had to pay for that!”

“Get out,” I snarl, “or it ain’t the only thing you’re going to be paying for.”

He must have anticipated there being some kind of guard around Marilyn’s home; he reaches into his back pocket, for a gun or a knife I don’t really care to find out. For all I know it’s probably another roll of film.

I don’t give the punk a chance to show proof. With a snarl, I let the fury course through me; my claws unsheathe, shredding my skin and cracking my bones.

The man’s eyes bug out of his head; he lets out a loud, prolonged scream and backs away.

“That’s right, sonny boy. Got some tricks up my sleeve. Write about it—see how many people even in L.A. believe that there’s something like me guarding her. Be right up there with the quacks camped around Area 51.”

“M-m-monster!” The man screams, running backwards down the rain-slicked drive. “A fucking monster!”

I wait until he’s out of sight. By that time, though, the front light turns on. I hear the door open, and my heart sinks.

“Jimmy?”

Fuck.

She heard him screaming, and came to see what the fuss was about.

And, because the universe likes throwing bones to a mongrel like me, she’s hurrying across the driveway despite the rain. I let my claws slide back into my body, barely grimacing at the pain of it.

“Just chased off a prowler,” I say, not wanting to scare her. Her hair is down and wet due to the rain; she’s got a silk housecoat thrown around her and probably nothing else.

I can’t tell if she notices the camera or not; the second she sees my knuckles, bloodied from my claws coming out, her eyes widen.

“You’re hurt!”

“It’s nothing.” Because really it isn’t.

Marilyn takes my hands in hers, and I want to flinch. If she sees my skin heal in front of her eyes, she’s going to be the next one to run screaming from the premises. 

But all she can seem to think about is me.

“God, you must have put up a fight. Come on. There’s bandages in my bathroom.” She takes me by the wrist, and I follow, knowing she won’t take no for an answer. 

“It’s nothing,” I say again. But she gave up listening to me; I don’t think she even heard my half-hearted protests.

By the time we get to the bathroom—rife with the warmth of the shower she just took, and smelling overpoweringly of her to the point where I can barely think—my knuckles have already healed. It’s fortunate that Marilyn is focused entirely on finding the bandages in the medicine chest. I can see her reflection in the mirror: distracted, panicked, determined to help someone who doesn’t need it.

She wants to do this; and not only can I not let her in on my secret, I don’t want to stop her in her course. I get the sense that she so rarely has a chance to help others in this way.

So, despite the pain it causes me, I let the tips of my claws slice through the skin of my knuckles over and over again, just barely enough to even be noticeable. I’m bleeding all over the bathroom mat, but she doesn’t care.

When she grabs my wrists the better to examine my hands, it’s to find them bloody and torn.

“What did you do to him, anyway?” She starts wiping at my already healing skin with a cloth wet down with peroxide.

“Y’know…just roughed him up a bit.”

“Well don’t do it again!” Her eyes are over bright but intent on her cause; already she’s got my skin clean and is winding bandages around my fingers. Her fingers shake; she’s furious about something.

“It’s what I get paid for,” I say lamely.

“I’m not worth it, Jimmy.” She tugs the bandages tight and her slender shoulders heave. Her hands drop mine and she turns, hugging her arms around herself.

It’s my turn to be angry.

“What if I think you are?”

She turns to me, her eyes alight with something like incredulity. A laugh, wild and humorless, echoes throughout the bathroom. “You’re kidding me, right? I thought I told you I wasn’t an angel.”

“And I thought I told you that I ain’t worth all this kind of trouble.” I wave my bandaged knuckles.

“Why does it bother you so much that I care about what happens to you?”

“Why does it bother _you_ so much that _I_ care about what happens to _you_? I’m sorry if seeing me a little bruised set you off; but that piece of garbage was camped outside your bedroom window with a camera, Marilyn.”

“People are always going to be pointing cameras at me, Jimmy!”

“And maybe they shouldn’t be!” I shout the words; Marilyn flinches, and I want to castrate myself with my own bare hands for bringing that fear into her eyes—for raising that ghost that seems to be haunting her all year round. 

I want her to scream at me; to pummel those hands that just tried to heal me into my chest. But she deflates; somehow she looks even smaller than she already is.

“I don’t need to be saved.” It sounds as if she’s trying to convince herself.

“No. I don’t suppose you do. But you do need a friend right now. Friends go around beating up other people for friends. Least they do in my backwoods experience of the world.”

Marilyn laughs again. “Friends? Are we friends Jimmy?”

“We’re whatever you want to be until we have to part ways.” I shake my head. “This whole thing is on my shoulders, darlin’. Should’a kept my big mouth shut the way Marty told me to and just played the role of silent bodyguard.”

“No. I don’t want that. Too many people keep their voices down when I walk into a room as it is. Only now it’s because they look at me and think: _there she is; not what she used to be, is she? Some pathetic drug addicted, boozehound slut_.”

I step towards her; I want to hold her, but I resist the desire with everything I have in me. “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”

“Then stop acting like you don’t deserve an ounce of pity, Jimmy. You’re a human, no matter what you did or think you’ve done. Everyone deserves a little kindness, especially at this time of year.”

“Including you." 

“I suppose so. Sometimes I wonder if I really am human.”

“Join the club. We can co-chair it together, as a matter of fact.”

Marilyn laughs again, this time real, but still soft and withdrawn. “A stalemate then. Guess we should make the best of it, huh? At least until we wash our hands of each other.” 

“That’s not what I meant.”

She cups my cheek, and it’s my turn to flinch. When she speaks again, she’s overwhelmingly sad. “You know what’s going to happen after New Year’s, baby. It always does with the best people in my life.”

I let myself cover her small hand with my big, bandaged one; because she’s right, at least in some way. I do want this—to be treated like a person who deserves friendship, compassion, even love. I slaughtered the one who had shown me that by sheer accident; and running from that had led me directly to a woman who’d turned me out even after we were married.

“Sleep, Jimmy.”

All of a sudden I feel the weight of exhaustion, as if Marilyn spoke the weariness into my marrow. She stands back, indicating that she wants me to leave the bathroom. I stop at the door, and look back at the floor. The pale blue mat near the sink is stained liberally with scarlet drops of my own needlessly shed blood.

“I can—

“No, Jimmy. I can. You might have seen a lot of war, but I think I’ve got more experience in cleaning blood up from bathroom floors.”

Before I can even begin to contemplate what it is that she means by this, she closes the door behind me, her sad smile like a slap in the face.


	5. Chapter 5

“What say we order some Chinese food tonight, Jimmy?”

I look up from my spot near the dishwasher, which so charitably happened to break down on Christmas Eve. Marilyn is standing in the kitchen door, her face flush with color. She hasn’t come out of her room all day—I heard her on the phone, talking for hours and hours with everyone from DiMaggio to Dean Martin, wishing them the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Year’s. Her laughter and the cheer in her voice warmed me—even though being alone and separate from her after our little scene in the bathroom left me feeling like an angry dog.

I wipe my hands on the old rags near my knees.

“Chinese? That’s a little exotic for Christmas.”

“Boiled pork and carrots doesn’t really seem all that fun to me tonight. And there’s not a chance I’m going to risk cooking a turkey or even canned peas. Unless you happen to be hiding a culinary talent I haven’t yet heard about?”

“Can’t cook to save my skin, darlin’.” Killing something and eating it raw, however, I’m well acquainted with. But again, that’s strictly need-to-know information.

“Then it looks like Column A and Column B for the both of us. I thought about pizza, but that’s a little too extravagant.”

It’s like being tipsy, being around her when she’s all aglow and shining like the tree we both decorated. I follow her like a puppy as she goes to the phonebook and looks for the nearest Chinese restaurant.

“It’s not really Chinese food,” Marilyn says as she drags one finger down the yellow page. “You’ve probably eaten more authentic haven’t you?”

“Not Chinese food. Japanese and Korean I’m really familiar with.”

“Japanese?” 

“Uh…during the last war. Got some shore leave and spent a while in Kyoto.” Several years of wedded ignorant bliss, pre-Korean war.

“I hope some chow mein and sweet and sour pork will be enough to tide us over.”

“Sounds like heaven to me, darlin’. Starving like a wolf over here.”

“With how long you were tinkering with that stupid machine, I’m hardly surprised.”

An hour later and we’re both hauling paper bags of battered shrimp and stir-fried vegetables into the kitchen. Paper boxes and Styrofoam cartons of soup find their way onto the island, along with a heaping helping of fortune cookies.

“Not much of a classic spread, I’m afraid,” Marilyn sighs. “Hey, how about we make it a little more snazzy, Jimmy?”

“Not following you.”

Marilyn retrieves plates and silverware. “We’ll make it look like a proper Christmas feast.” She doles spring rolls and teriyaki chicken onto the spotless plates pulled from Marty’s cupboards. “Here’s the turkey--” she gestures at the chicken dumplings—“and here’s the greens and the cranberries.”

I can’t help but chuckle. Talk about looking on the bright side of a train wreck. But still, there’s something about this—about finding gold in the wreckage that just screams real holiday tradition—that speaks volumes of the kind of woman Marilyn really is.

She won’t let me stand back and watch. The next thing I know, I’m ladling ginger and carrot soup into bowls and arranging the half-dozen fortune cookies on a platter. It’s like a dance—she ducks under my arms as she prepares our little feast and I do my best to not brush up against her. Not even the smell of the food can do anything to stop me from inhaling her Chanel.

It’s done in a matter of minutes, and even I’m smiling a little at the sight.

“Brother,” Marilyn laughs. “This might be the nicest, saddest little Christmas Eve dinner I’ve ever had.”

“Nicest I’ve eaten in a while. Usually it’s a can of beans and lukewarm Cola.”

“Cola!” Marilyn bustles to the refrigerator and grabs a bottle of sparkling grape cider. “Good thing Marty was kind enough to leave some of this. And don’t you fret, my sober companion—I’ll drink it virgin.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Virgin is great. Not that it’s something I’ve seen in many a day.”

“So you’ve been with experienced women or you were young when you first had one?”

“A little of Column A and a little of Column B.”

Marilyn giggles, and starts taking plates out to the dining room. “Let me guess: sixteen, right?”

“Fourteen.”

“Merciful blessings, but that’s barely a teenager. Now don’t tell me—an older brother couldn’t live if his kid brother remained pure before his sophomore year?”

“Something like that.” In all honesty it was expected of me—my old man was such a meat and potatoes guy—still nice as they came, of course—but the week after my big one-four, I came into my room to find a lady of the night from the nearest town waiting for me.

Marilyn sets down our food, and I’m right behind her.

“Well, that’s enough talk about such things. It’s Christmas Eve, after all. No need to befoul the holiest of nights with talk of pleasures of the flesh. Although I certainly think the Baby Jesus would have been happy knowing that people were celebrating in the, ah—Biblical sense.”

I pull a chair out for her. “I’ll drink to that, and many other things.”

The food is imitation—every place calling itself Chinese is nothing more than an immigrant’s understanding of what Yankees think Chinese food actually resembles. But maybe it’s because of the way Marilyn and I have spread it out to look like a real feast that it actually goes down the hatch smoothly; maybe it’s because there’s a Sinatra Christmas broadcast coming from the stereo on the fireplace; or maybe it’s just the two of us, enjoying each other and this night together.

We talk; we laugh; we feed each other bits of baby corn and clumps of rice, which Marilyn decides serve as our mashed potatoes and gravy. She tells me about her Christmases past—nothing long past, of course. I don’t need to know where it was that she came from because it’s the worst kept secret in the world that she was tossed from family to family like some alley cat. She gets me to spill the beans about some of my Christmases—half of the things I tell her are either made up or else Frankenstein creations of things that actually happened.

All the while I keep my eyes on her—on the way her cheeks are flushed with excitement and laughter. She’s unlike anyone, man or woman, I’ve ever known, and I tell her so sometime after we start cracking open the fortune cookies.

“I take that as a compliment, given how colorful your life has been. And if you don’t mind me saying so, _you’re_ unlike anyone I’ve ever known, man or woman.”

“I’ll take that as compliment, given how colorful _your_ life has been.” I gulp the grape cider—and for once I don’t wish that it were something more potent. Being drunk would only make it harder for me to appreciate what’s happening here. 

I break open another fortune cookie. My eyebrows arch at the message on the back.

“What’s it say? Are you going to meet a tall, dark stranger?”

“Nah. It says that I’ll lose all my hair during a total eclipse on Arbor Day while listening to the Marine Corps band playing Home On the Range and watching a badminton match between two guys named Ichabod.”

“Sounds boring.”

Chuckling, I show her the actual message on the paper. Her gaze becomes soft; she smiles sadly and hands me the slip back.

“You really think that’s going to happen, Jimmy?”

“You heard the paper; they’ve got to be right at least once in a while.”

“I suppose home for you is Canada, huh?”

“It is. Haven’t been there in a while.” A very long while.

Marilyn sighs, and starts crumbling the end of an uneaten fortune cookie with her fingers. “I went there once—to Jasper. We were filming _River of No Return_. It wasn’t a walk in the park, so to speak, but it was still nice. Everyone there was so polite—kept to themselves. It was the first time in living memory I actually had to approach someone and ask them if they wanted an autograph, they were all so nervous about me. But it was so beautiful up there—the perfect place to live without any bother.”

“That’s why I like it. Nobody around to have to live up to or listen to—just me and the woods and the wolves.”

She glances at me, her hair a halo of white-gold around her face. “You want to hide, don’t you?”

“More than anything.”

“And that’s why you took this job, isn’t it?”

“You’re a psychic, darlin’.”

“No such animal; I just recognize a kindred spirit. But would you be happy alone, do you think?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ever had to be.”

She sighs, elbows on the table, and gazes off into the great everlasting if. “Think about it though—far away from any kindness or understanding.”

“Far away from judgment and persecution.”

“Oh, but that’s not all there is to it. I know that for a fact.”

Only she doesn’t because she’s a gorgeous movie star, and I’m a freak of nature—a beast.

I push my plate away, no longer hungry. “You’ve never thought about it? Running and hiding?”

“Many times. What do you think this is? Although Marty probably thinks it’s just as much to save me from myself as it is to save me from the hounds of Hollywood.” She looks me in the eye again. “Absolutely nobody to keep you company?”

I frown. “No…kind of what solitude is.”

“It could be just so wonderful,” she sighs, staring off into space again. “You could chop the firewood, I could learn to cook your catch of the day. That, or I could hire someone from the local town to do so. We’d spend our days enjoying nature and the radio—no movies, no television. Every weekend or so we’d go into town and do something nice for each other. There could even be some rugrats—two or three—two boys and a girl sounds nice. We’d teach them everything they need to know about life, and they’d look out for each other. I could home school them—I think I’d be good at that. And then once we reach old age and infirmity, they’d take care of us—our two strong, handsome boys and our beautiful, resilient daughter.”

The food turns to ash in my guts; I feel the blood leaving my face. She’s painting us both a picture that’ll never see the light of day—making it sound so fucking wonderful. It’s like she’s cracked my skull open and seen the things I hide from myself—the things I’ve only ever really wanted. It’s so vivid, this painting: I can see those two strong, handsome boys—boys with her blonde hair and blue eyes but my height and strength. I can see our daughter, too—just as beautiful as her mother, but with my innate sense of detecting bullshit and lack of standing for it, too.

Again, the lone wolf in me howls, out of a different desire this time—it wants its pack, its family. But its not just because I’d never be able to live that way due to what I am—I couldn’t stand to outlive her and our kids, and nothing short of sheer disintegration will kill me. No, it’s because neither of us can have it—and what’s more, Marilyn knows it.

Something must show on my face—around her, my mastery of deception can’t stand up straight, let alone breathe.

“There I go again.” She sounds resentful of herself. She gets to her feet, threading her fingers through her hair. “Some Christmas present that turned out to be, huh Jimmy?”

“Marilyn, wait—

“I need to get some shut-eye. Nothing to look forward to tomorrow but an empty tree-skirt anyway.” She laughs that Chekov tragedy laugh again. Her lips quiver, and I can tell she wants nothing more than to come and give me another goodnight kiss, like the one she gave me the night before.

But she stays still for a moment, shaking her head. “Goodnight.” Then she’s all but hurrying out of the dining room, her eyes on the floor, her hair hiding half of her face.

Perry Como is singing Silent Night; I can smell the wood from the fire in the living room as it burns on and on; hear it crackle and pop. It feels like my guts have been ripped out of me—of course, I didn’t do anything wrong this time. I was just there for that story, that beautiful fucking story that lit a momentary spark in my cold, dead heart.

I flex my fingers again; the bandages slipped off the night after Marilyn wound them around my knuckles. She’s been thinking it was her hands that healed mine, and I wish that they were. But who I am—what I am—can’t even let either of us have that.

Instead of flipping Marty’s expensive Sears-Roebuck purchased dining table over in my anger, I go for the more productive option of clearing the dishes and putting them in the recently repaired washer. I want to go to her, to tell her that she didn’t do anything wrong in weaving that little story for the both of us—that it’s a nicer gift than anything I’ve had in a while, even if it hurts like a steel-toed kick to the nutsack.

But she’ll turn me away—I know she will. She’s this odd, biohazard concoction of self-hatred and belief in the betterment of everything. I remember how we argued in her bathroom that night I caught the paparazzi sneaking around her window—she’ll have none of me trying to make her see how I see her, and why the fuck should she? I certainly don’t let her try and make myself see the same in me.

We’re almost cut from the same cloth, and I’d curse both of our luck at having to spend this time together, only I can’t say as I’m too upset about it.

I look out the window; from this side of the house, the glow of LA’s light pollution isn’t as visible; the stars speckle the sky ahead—the clear sky without a sign of snow to make this a really White Christmas after all. Stars, as I’ve been told, are already dead by the time their light reaches us, but I’ve never truly bought into that. Something about it taking this long for their light to reach us—but how in the fuck can a world that hasn’t even figured out how to keep its own peace longer than a decade claim to know anything about the big, big infinity of space?

I don’t want to know what the stars are—I like their mystery. I’ve got one sleeping at the other end of this house that doesn’t belong to either one of us, and she’s as much a mystery here on Earth as she would be up there in the heavens.

Maybe that’s all that it is at the end of the day: everything is a mystery, and people only suffer because we try so goddamn hard to figure things out—to know what and why and how to feel safer at night.

But we’re not.

None of us are.

I close the curtains, and then deaden the fire. It would be too cruel to shut the lights of the tree off—even a jaded son of a bitch like me still likes to believe in these little traditions, after all. Even if old Saint Nick won’t come here, the spirit of him might.

Then it’s to my room—the room that Marilyn thinks is too small despite it being like a suite at the Hilton to a guy like me.

I shower, keeping the water piping hot, trying my damndest not to think about that picture perfect future. Just because she could run away with me doesn’t mean she’s going to—doesn’t mean that fucking fortune on that stupid piece of paper is going to remotely come true in the least.

When my skin starts to blister from the hot water, I leave the shower, towel off and head to bed in my usual pajamas of nothing. We’ve got more than a week left together, and what could happen between now and then is terrifying.

I lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, thinking of how screwed up this all is.

Then I smell it from down the hall—her perfume. I hear her door open and close, and hear her feet as she pads softly across the floor—right towards my door.

Before I have a chance to get out of bed, she’s opening the door. It’s all but pitch black, but she finds her way as if she’s moved through shadows before. She’s wearing a robe almost like a kimono, and I know she’s just as exposed under it as I am under the sheets.

This is bad, this can’t be allowed to happen.

But it does.

She turns back the sheet, drops the robe and slips onto the mattress next to me. My skin burns anew, and my mind fires on all cylinders. I try to move away from her; my dick’s already filling with blood, and I hate that I’m so fucking weak as to not be able to avoid that.

Not only does this go against everything I’m trying to fight back, but Marty is going to have an aneurysm if he finds out about this.

“Don’t…” I whisper the word as I feel her body—so soft and slight—flush against my side. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing, my erection not withstanding. She doesn’t know how sullied I am by my life—that I’ve run with the wolves and then some; that I’ve killed without thinking, eaten garbage and worse to stay alive; she doesn’t know how fucking hairy I am, or that I’ve fucked anything that would move at my worst.

She doesn’t flinch away from coarseness of my body. She laughs, gentle as new fallen snow, and rakes her fingers through my chest hair.

“You’re fuzzy. Like a grizzly bear.” She moves closer, pressed against my side; her leg slides softly over mine, and her skin brushes against…

I hiss in a breath, closing my eyes at the contact. But Marilyn doesn’t move away or any closer.

“My, my, my…and as big as—“

“Please,” I’m almost begging now. “Please, don’t. I don’t want you to think—

She only laughs, and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “I’m not going to hurt you, Jimmy.”

“It ain’t me I’m worried about.”

“If you were going to, you’d have done so by now.” She sighs, her breath tickling my neck. “I just don’t want to be alone tonight, or tomorrow for that matter.”

“You’re sure this ain’t bothering you any?”

“No. You’re nice and warm, baby. Cozy, like a blanket. And don’t worry about your predicament—I’m not.” She makes an affected shiver. “Feeling a little exposed here.”

I know what she wants; it’s just that my arm feels like it’s been filled with liquid steel. I don’t trust myself enough, but again, I can’t say no to her—not when all she wants, at least as much as I can tell, is just to be held for a while. And fuck me and call me scum if not’s what I want, too.

My arm finally curls around her; she sighs again, relaxing into my touch, her head against my chest.

“Merry Christmas, Jimmy.” She murmurs, drifting off into that place of dreams where she and I can both have our family in the Great White North.

I exhale, letting myself feel her for all she is at that moment.

“Yeah. Merry Christmas, darlin’.”


	6. Chapter 6

I’ve never had such a long, restful sleep in all my damn life. It feels like being just under the surface of a warm body of water, carrying me along. There aren’t any nightmares—no memories of screams or blood or painful howls: just slumber.

Of course, it can’t last long, because nothing good lasts long in any man’s life.

The phone rings, long and loud. I squeeze my eyes shut, even as the noise rips me from sleep. There’s something exquisitely soft and warm pressed against me, something that smells amazingly of woman. As the sleep disappears from my mind, I remember who it is, where we are, and what day it is.

Sweet Christmas.

I smile a little, and hold her close to me. The phone stops ringing—whoever was trying to get through has given up the ghost. Animal instinct tells me that it’s at least half past-nine in the morning—too late to really enjoy whatever blessed festivities people all over the world are enjoying right now. I could honestly care less; she’s here, with me, sleeping soundly.

I almost don’t want to open my eyes, too scared to find that this all really is just a dream. But she’s there, one side of her face buried in my chest, her arms half slumped around my shoulders. Her hair’s in disarray, her lips slightly tweaked as she breathes deeply in and out, unaware of the phone.

I decide that this is probably my favorite look for her—relaxed, content, away from anything seeking to take something from her.

We’re going to stay here all the damn day, I know. And honestly, that’s the best fucking Christmas present out of the maybe three or four I’ve ever received.

The phone rings again just as I’ve closed my eyes. I feel Marilyn tense, and anger rips through me. The phone is ruining her sleep, ruining her peace and solitude. I can’t have that—not for her.

So, with my usual finesse and grace, I slip out of bed and walk, buck naked and half-bleary eyed towards the phone near the door.

“ ‘Lo?” I’m expecting Marty—he’ll want to check up on his merchandise, after all.

But the voice that answers is deep, resonant and tinged with an accent that I can’t quite place.

“Uh…hey, mac. Are you the bodyguard Marty hired?”

Holy sweet Baby Jesus. Joe fucking DiMaggio. I tense, as if the Yankee Clipper himself is in the room with us right now. Not that I did anything, or am inclined to do anything at all to his once and former missus, but it still seems wrong to be talking to this guy while I’m in my birthday suit.

“Yes. I am.” I pause. “I think she’s still asleep if you want to talk to her.”

A glance over my shoulder shows Marilyn curled in the blankets, half my pillow over her face. She shakes her head, as if she can sense my looking at her.

“Oh.” DiMaggio sounds more disappointed than a kid who just found out he was getting’ nuttin’ for Christmas. “It’s all good, mac. I don’t want to disturb her. She needs her sleep. Sure you know that.”

“Yeah. She does sleep a lot.”

“Let her know for me, yeah? Got some well-wishes to…y’know…give her. She rang me up yesterday, but, y’know…nothin’ like hearing from people on the day of.”

 Christ does he sound like the most defeated bastard in the world. I look back at Marilyn again, but she isn’t budging from the cocoon of blankets.

“I will. I guarantee it.”

DiMaggio laughs, and it sounds like the man’s version of Marilyn’s sad little laugh. “Guarantee it, eh? That’s better than the last bodyguard who looked after her. Merry Christmas, mac.”

“Yeah. Merry Christmas, Mister DiMaggio.”

He hangs up, that laugh still sounding in my ears.

Still feeling like I just escaped from some kind of inquisition, I get about a foot from the phone when, again it rings. I sigh a soft curse, not wanting it to be too loud; it is Christmas morning, after all, and profanity ain’t proper on such an occasion.

“Hello?”

“Oh, are you the bodyguard? I’d like to speak to Marilyn please. This is her sister.”

I look back to the bed. Marilyn sits up, eyes still closed, and shakes her head once more.

“Uh, I think she’s still asleep. Want me to go check on her?”

“Oh. No. That’s alright. She needs her sleep. Just let her know that I called, would you kindly?”

“I will. Thank you. Merry Chris—

She hangs up before I can finish the greeting. Marilyn flops back down onto the bed. This time I get two steps before the phone ring once more.

Before I so much as turn around, Marilyn shoots from the mattress, storms across the room, and yanks the receiver cord from the wall. Her shoulders heave; her lips are thinned, as if the phone gravely insulted her by rousing her from slumber.

“Really, they can’t wait until dinnertime. Don't people have children to attend to today?”

“It, ah, might be later wherever they are.”

Marilyn scoffs, then looks around. Her eyes catch the window and her brows rise. “What do you know about that? There’s frost on the ground.”

So there is—a thick coating of white crystallization has spread everywhere. It’s creeping up the windowpanes, spidery fingers ghosting along the glass.

“Does that count as a white Christmas?” I ask.

“Second hand white Christmas. Fitting for me, I think.”

“And me.”

Marilyn laughs, then yawns. “Oh, I really don’t have the energy to do anything but stay in bed until the sun goes down. But I sure could go for some coffee—maybe even some toast and eggs.”

“Well, it’s your lucky day, darlin’. Toast and eggs just happen to be the two things I can cook without making a mess of.”

Marilyn smiles. “My knight in furry armor. I hope you don’t mind if I wait here while you prepare for us?”

“Not at all.”

I turn to find my pants.

“No, baby.” She’s still speaking with her normal cadence—but there’s something of that movie-star purr in her voice now—like a Lauren Bacall cat coming out to play. “There’s nobody around for miles and nobody’s going to show up today of all days.”

I can’t believe she makes me freeze. It’s so goddamn ridiculous after everything I’ve ever experienced.

“Are you saying you want me to serve you breakfast in bed _au naturel_?”

“No. I’m saying I want you to serve _us_ breakfast in bed _au naturel_. You wear your skin so well, Jimmy. I think it would be a shame to cover it up. Besides,” she adds a little _Seven Year Itch_ pout, “I’m not expecting much for Christmas up here. Don’t you want to give me some kind of present?”

I can’t help but smile a little bit; this is so crazy, but I gave up trying to fight against that tide days ago.

I make a little bow. “Your gigolo, darlin’.”

“Not a gigolo, Jimmy.”

“Then what?”

“My gift.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying—can’t understand what it means to someone like me who’s nothing more than a curse on the face of the planet.

But she wants me to be happy as much as I want her to be; and it is Christmas morning. Who the hell am I to be a downer when this might be the nicest comfort and joy I’ll ever know?

I turn to leave, and then all but yelp when I feel her hand slap me on my bare ass. I stare at her, completely blindsided. But she only laughs that crystal crazy laugh and sinks back down onto the mattress.

We stay in that bed all day in our skin, sipping the chicory coffee and getting toast crumbs all over the sheets—not that it matters much by way of messing them up, given that my hairy ass has been sleeping in them for the last little while.

It feels like we talk about everything and nothing—the nothing being mostly a result of all the evasions and lies I have to tell her.

She tells me all about growing up as Norma Jean; I try not to think too much about how fitting it is that we both use names that don’t really belong to us. I had to register in the military with the name James Howlett, even though I’ve gone as something else since before the circus.

We talk about baseball and the weather—about all this guff in the news about going to the moon.

“If you ask me,” Marilyn says, “we should be busier exploring one another—not just in the Biblical sense, you understand. But the mind—the heart and soul. I don’t think there’d be as much war if men and women only understood each other more.”

“Amen to that.”

“Do you think it’ll ever happen again, Jimmy?”

“What? War?”

“Mhm.”

I’m leaning against the headboard; she’s sitting cross-legged near my knees with a sheet draped around her shoulders. I want to tell her a lie—that there will be peace on Earth and goodwill towards men. But when you’ve seen as much conflict as I have, you lose the faith in the better nature of things. Besides, if it isn’t men killing each other over borders and territories, it’s their differences. Whites lynching blacks; homosexuals being beaten to death…guys like me being kept in cages.

“Someone once said that the best way to maintain peace was to be prepared for war.”

“ _Si vis pacem, para bellum_.” Marilyn sighs. “Some things never change…although sometimes they do. I suppose it’s in the nature of everything to change, isn’t it? I just wish it wasn’t always so…well, devastating.”

“Well now…change can be good sometimes, I s’pose.”

“Except in the movies.” She grins. “People already rant and rail about all the sex in pictures like _Untamed Youth_ —that’s a Mamie van Doren film, you know. But for crying out loud, that isn’t sex. Motion pictures haven’t seen sex…at least on the big screen.”

“You think that’s the next frontier?”

“Oh, the studio’s are already being brought to their knobbly little knees. If it’s not them, it’s this whole country—everything’s changing, for the good I think. But it’s going to take a lot. Lots of loss. Like a forest burning down, or a phoenix dying. Something has to come from nothing, right?”

I grin. “Right.” She has no idea how right she is.

Marilyn waves her arms at me. “Just look at this right now—two grown adults sitting together naked as the day as long in bed. Even as little as thirty years ago that would have been cause for scandal. But it’s happening more and more now.”

I shift a little, but again she only laughs.

“Don’t go getting bashful, Jimmy. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. You’re comfortable with being nude, I can tell.”

She’s got the sheet around her, like I said. I’ve been lying out with everything on display since I came back to the bedroom with our breakfast hours beforehand.

“Kind of par for the course in the military, darlin’.”

“Is it? Color me surprised with a box of crayons. I suppose early rising and communal showers don’t give time for shyness.”

“Okay, okay. And maybe I’ve spent some personal time going it all Garden of Eden.”

“Out in your middle of nowhere in Canada?”

“Sure. If the cabin’s hot enough, ain’t no need for threads.” I can feel her eyes raking in my body, and I want to hide what it’s doing to me; but she doesn’t seem to give much of a damn.

“I used to hate it,” she says. “Not so much anymore, though. That’s why I tell them that I only wear Chanel Number Five to bed. You get to know your own self when you’re not wearing all these designer clothes. No artifice, right? Just you and the skin you have.”

“You’re a woman after my own heart.”

Marilyn laughs again. “I can only hope so.”

“So you think we’re going to see more nudist camps with all this change?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But all this—“ she gestures at the room—at the paneled wall and the carpet and all the fine furniture—“it’s going to disappear. All this stuff that people keep trying to paint over the ugly cracks is going to be front and center in the next five years. And I? I think I’m going to retire.”

I frown. “What makes you say that?”

“What makes me say that aside from that I’m tired, lonely and the laughing stock of Hollywood?”

“Marilyn, nobody’s laughin’ at you.”

“Aren’t they?” She smiles sadly. “Well, even if they aren’t, I’m still going to be thirty-six soon. That’s old in this town, baby. It’ll be over for me before you know it, even if I keep my figure and face.”

“Ah, come on now. There’s plenty of roles for…women of a certain age.”

“Sure, if they play psycho biddies and maiden aunts. Nobody’s going to know what to do with me.” Something changes in her eyes for a moment—again, I think about a ghost of some kind—not about someone already dead, but about someone more spirit than person. Then she shakes her head and crawls across the bed to lay against me again, arms around my neck once more. “I don’t want to be maudlin today. There’s still hours until Christmas is over and I’d like to spend it here. With you. Nice and warm and safe and happy.”

“You feel all that just ‘cause of me?”

“Sure do. Got a problem with that, Jimmy?”

“Not really.”

But deep down, I still feel like some scared little pup.


	7. Chapter 7

The day after Christmas shifts everything back into some kind of focus—like a film lens finally getting a shot just right. The frost that crept around the grounds of Marty’s house melts away, leaving nothing more than L.A. warmth and the breezy Santa Ana winds.

Marilyn spends all of that day dressed—as do I, sitting in the living room, toking on a cigar. She’s in the study down the hall, the door open, answering all the missed phone calls she neglected the day before. The only time she bothers shutting me out is when she phones DiMaggio. I hate myself for how small it makes me feel—he’s her ex-husband, after all, and they’re friendly like now. DiMaggio certainly seems to care the moon about her; and again, this is all going to be over on the First of January.

I want to convince myself that this is just a passing thing—that we’re just pretending at being two stupid kids the likes of which we never got to be. But I can’t lie to myself on the best of days; we’ve done something to each other, and I know it’s going to end in disaster. Even if I take her—even if she follows me back to Canada after all this is over—there’s still my condition; I’ll stay young, she’ll grow old.

But her very presence refuses to let me sink into this weight of despair and cynical pragmatism: she leaves the study every once in a while, carrying the phone with her to watch me as she speaks to friends and former co-stars. Judging by the expressions she makes when talking to some of them, I can tell it’s only just by courtesy that she’s giving them the compliments of the season.

She stays in my bed again that night, and the next night as well. The day of, we spend as much time together outside the room as possible—we play board games stowed in one of the cupboards; we watch whatever post-Christmas television special is being broadcast; she plays record after record on the player, chief among them is Ella Fitzgerald.

“My dear, dear friend Ella,” she sighs, as she sways in time to the music.

I watch her, nursing a cup of cranberry juice mixed with ginger ale—Christ, but staying sober for this long is a record. Then again, just being around her is enough to make my head swim. 

Marilyn starts to sing along to Ella’s velvet tones: “ _Ah, but in case I stand one little chance…here comes the jackpot question in advance…what ware you doing New Year’s…New Year’s Eve?”_

She walks towards me and the armchair I’ve been lounging on. She’s smiling that half-dreamy smile, and somehow it makes me feel just a little less lousy about myself.

“ _Oh what are you doing…Ne-e-ew Ye-ea-ar’s Eve_?” She lowers herself onto my lap, sliding her legs around my waist, her eyes never leaving mine for a second. I feel the heat pull in my gut—I’ve prided myself in keeping tabs on any and all natural response to her as a result of sleeping next to her these last few nights.

It all goes out the window now; she’s abandoning something, that easy camaraderie between the two of us—for something else, something that’s been whispering at us both for days now. I have to push her away, but she’s kissing me before I can even move by all my honed instinct.

The wolf in me—that lone, feral beast—lets out a triumphant howl. I drop my cigar into the ashtray on the side table; my arms grasp her shoulders, holding her as we kiss. She gasps, her body closing in on mine, her whole form melting. I see stars behind my eyes when I feel her grinding into me, and I think about what this could lead to after all.

The record skips, the needle scratching against the wax ruts in the 45.

Marilyn pulls away then, her whole body tensing. Her lipstick is smeared, and her eyes are wide, as if she’s surprised to see me at all. I can smell her sudden fear, not of me, but of something else—of what we’re doing. I want nothing more than to possess her—I’ve done it before in the days of my feral runs with the wolves. It’s something that haunts me every day, something that has made me terrified of this very thing since I stepped foot into this place.

“Oh God…” She wipes her lips—wipes me off of her lips—and clambers off my lap, looking confused, lost…frightened.

I want to go to her, to comfort her; but I know she’ll only push me away.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice small and diminished. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

“Didn’t do nothin’, darlin’.”

“But I did.” Her eyes dart to the hall leading to the front door, as if waiting for an entire brute squad to break in—like some teenage girl waiting for her daddy to come home with a shotgun pointed at the local Greaser she took to her room. “I did and…oh God. I have to go to bed. I have to go…”

She all but tears from the room, her head down, her eyes still wide as a startled gazelle.

A bomb goes off in my chest and guts, but I don’t move. I don’t say anything; I just sit there letting the record scratch and skip, staring at the Christmas tree we haven’t taken down yet. The branches are plastic, spray painted green in some factory in Des Moines; the baubles are cheap, and the candy canes bought from a five and dime.

It’s artificial.

Just like what Marilyn and I have been trying to make out of a life of gunshells and blood, barbiturates and broken dreams.

I sleep alone that night, and fuck me if I don’t stay up for hours waiting for her—listening for her. She never arrives; I’m convinced she really did fall asleep, because I can’t hear any telltale sounds from the other end of the house.

My claws unsheathe more than once—I need to cause myself some kind of pain, need to make myself bleed for being so stupid—so careless with her. I should have put a stop to it the day that we were at the diner—should have kept that barrier between employer and employee firmly in place. But I didn’t, and I let the both of us think that something could come of this when there’s nothing for a stray mutt and a broken angel but disaster and doom?

When I wake up, she’s still in her room. I pause just down the hallway from her bedroom door. I can hear her, her voice low and scared, talking on the phone, not distinctly enough for me to hear what she’s saying. It’s for the best that I don’t; I know she’s panicking about what happened—probably pissed at me something royal for having not had the decency to keep myself under control.

The memory of her body and kiss linger on my mind all that day. I make us breakfast; she doesn’t take any. I put a frozen TV dinner in the oven; she sneaks some potatoes and peas when I’m away in the john. I go to bed alone that night with the knowledge that this’ll all be over—and that maybe she really will keep herself confined to that room at the end of the hall.

She doesn’t poke her head out the next day, either. I start to worry—she’s been so good since we’ve been together, but I know that she has a history just as painted with destruction as mine—only in her case, it’s a destruction of the self.

It starts raining buckets by lunch time; I wonder if I should call Marty, or even DiMaggio—anyone who she’ll take comfort from, because God knows it’s not going to be me. I’m the reason she’s hiding herself away after all.

But I know she’ll hate that—hate that I went behind her back and treated her like some kind of invalid, the way so, so many others have. So I wait, listening, smelling and waiting for any sign that she needs help.

That she needs me.

It comes after sunset; I’ve been hearing her move around her room, pacing back and forth, but otherwise none the worse for wear. She stops, and stops for a full fifteen minutes that have me on my toes, ears alert.

Then something shatters, and I hear one of the sounds from her that I’ve been dreading: a scream.

I’m down the hall in seconds flat, aware that she’s screaming—sobbing something now—sobbing the name she’s been calling me all these days.

“Jimmy…Jimmy!”

I shoulder the door open. Her room—the borrowed room—is a mess, as if a wolverine had been let loose in it. The sheets are thrown all over the place, the pillows are on the floor; the clothes and other things from her suitcases lay like broken bits of battle.

The bathroom door is wide open; she’s slumped on the floor, next to the tub, that same silk robe around her. Her hair is disheveled, and her face is flushed, her eyes wide and filled with tears. When she turns those eyes on me it brings me to my knees, right next to her; my kneecaps crunch on something, and I look around at the tiles.

There are little blue pills all over the place, the small bottle they came in lying empty near the commode.

“I took one,” she gasps, even as I take her in my arms and hold her. “I took one…I didn’t need it, but I took it…I just needed to calm down…”

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” I say, holding her close. “I’m so sorry.”

“No…didn’t do anything. It was all me.”

I shift us both so that most of my strength is keeping her upright—my back against the cold, hard tub, her in my arms, breathing as if she’s run a mile. My fingers thread through her snowy blonde hair, and somehow I feel almost just as helpless as she does.

“Didn’t do nothin’.”

“I did…that fantasy…running away with you…it’s your life, Jimmy, I shouldn’t have…shouldn’t be…just a bunch of lies…”

“You ain’t got the monopoly on lying, Marilyn.”

She looks up at me; I know she’s not lying about only taking one of those dolls on the floor. Her pupils are big, but she’s still lucid, even if she sounds sleepy.

“Yeah?”

“Sure. I lie as much as the next person.”

“About what?”

I take a deep breath. “My name, for starters. Don’t usually go by James Howlett; just used that on the resumé I handed good old Marty.”

“But I’ve been calling you Jimmy—

“I like it. Really. And my name _is_ James Howlett, it’s just not what I usually go by.”

“Then what do you go by?”

It’s like if I tell her she’ll have my number—have something on me: like a demon being held under the sway of an exorcist.

When I say it out loud, it sounds like I’m in pain, even to my own ears. 

“Logan." 

Marilyn curls closer to me. Her voice is far off—she’s going to fall asleep soon, and I’ll be damned if I go anyway.

“Me and you…Marilyn and Jimmy; Norma Jean and Logan…like peanut butter and jelly, huh?”

I kiss the top of her head; she just said it out loud…my name, and the reason that we couldn’t make this work even in the most vivid painting of a fantasy. 

“Yeah. Just like it, darlin’.”

When she falls asleep, I stay there with her, feeling her breath against me. It’s almost time for me to run away—time for me to go back to that green forest where I can get lost. Only now that I think about it, the wilds that I love so much are just another kind of cage—only difference is it’s one I choose to live in—one that works for me.

Just like how the lights and the fans work for her.

I carry her to bed, cover her up and brush her hair out of her face.

I spend a solid five minutes sweeping all the barbiturates off the floor, hating every last one. I’ve taken hits of pure ganja, shot of morphine and even tranquilizers just to get through some of the worst pain ever thrown my way—but for some reason I find myself wanting to crush the dolls into a fine blue powder—make them suffer for the dreams they steal and the souls they eat. 

I flush them all down the toilet. They haven’t claimed her tonight—it’s a victory, because she called for me and because I came running. I think about what might have happened if she’d been up here alone, and it makes the tips of my claws tear through my knuckles.

But she’s here; she’s alive and asleep; and even though she’s all these things, I know that this was a steeply paid victory over both of our demons. Something’s changed, and I wish I could be satisfied with that—wish I could find it easier that there’s now a perfect reason for both of us not to miss each other.

I guess I’m more human than I think; because the only thing that thought makes me feel is tearing misery.


	8. Chapter 8

We’ve been cooped up in this house since the day Marilyn bought our Christmas decorations. Being trapped like that always eats away at me, but I can’t look at this as a trap—not like the circus, or even Japan. She’s made the whole place feel like many different ones without much of an effort.

She doesn’t ask me about the barbiturates; the day after she took that single pill, she wakes groggy, but leaves her bedroom. We spend the day together, that old something special there, although I highly doubt she’s going to be crawling into bed with me between now and the last day of our being together.

So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that, on the morning of New Year’s Eve, she walks into the kitchen all dressed in a pencil skirt and tight sweater and says, “We’ve got to go out dancing tonight, Jimmy.”

Even after what I told her, she doesn’t call me Logan; it’s actually kind of nice that way.

I look at her over the top of my cuppa joe. Marty said that she wasn’t supposed to go out to anywhere the booze flows, and after the other night, I don’t want to be dangling the catnip in front of the kitty-cat’s nose for anything. 

Again, it’s like she can hear me.

“Not a nightclub, Jimmy. Not even a dive or a bar—but a nice restaurant. Somewhere with live music—somewhere small, too.”

I’ve been around the city enough on my prowls over the years to know at least half a dozen of those places. And for some reason, one in particular comes to mind, probably because of that talk we had when we spent Christmas Day together in my bed.

“ _Gray Phoenix_. Over on Normandie. They’ve got jazz bands. Hear their New Year’s Eve’s are pretty special, even though it’s small.”

“Jazz, huh? You were paying attention when we were listening to darling Ella, weren’t you!”

“How could I not, darlin’? She’s got a voice like an angel.”

“It’d be nice if other people thought that.” She sighs, and gives me a once over. “Wear your suit for me, hm? I think I’ve got something simple and special—just for tonight.”

“Of course.”

Why the hell not? Put on that penguin suit that makes me uncomfortable, that crushes my nuts and scratches at my neck. This is the last night—there’s been some kind of electric-eel in my guts feeling all day long. It’s going to end after today—just another chapter in my life—just another regret.

I comb my hair; I shave even, not too close—just enough to leave some bristle behind. I still think I look like a dog taught to walk on its hind legs—some stray mutt forced into human clothes for a joke. But she wants me to do this, and when she meets me in the front hall, I’m glad that I did.

It’s her idea of simple; to me it’s like Cinderella’s magic ball gown. It’s the color of red, red wine, with little bits of bright jewels sewn into it so that it looks even more like some piece of the sky. Some people would call it tame on her—sure, it shows that she’s got what she’s got, but its still damn near chaste on a so-called sex symbol.

What with her hair, she looks like the spirit of New Year’s come to life.

She bites her lip when she sees me staring. Her eyes scan me up and down again, and this time I feel myself stand up a little straighter.

“You cut a fine figure, Jimmy. Any woman would be lucky to have you take her out on the town.”

“I think I’m the lucky one here, darlin’.”

“Let’s not make a contest of it, Jimmy.” She threads her arm through mine, leans close to me, and nods at the door. “There’s a town out there waiting to be painted red.”

She rides next to me in the car, not silent this time—we talk about everything we see on the drive—Marilyn giving her thoughts and opinions on various hotspots.

“Rudest staff ever, but the clam chowder was to die for. Oh, and there…well, I won’t tell you what I saw two of the busboys doing when I went out for a breath of fresh air, but it did rather tickle my fancy.”

Just for tonight we pretend that this is a part of that dream she carved out for us—that there’s something to it after all. The thoughts and doubts come creeping to me, but I just let them stay there.

This ain’t about them; it’s about us.

The _Gray Phoenix_ could well be a hole in the wall. It’s a two story dark-brick place closer to where most of the blacks in Los Angeles go. From the outside it looks like nothing—there isn’t even a neon sign to show it off—just a painted board above the door with a gray mythological bird with its wings wrapped around itself.

Marilyn gets looks when we enter; people stare, people point, but nobody swarms. One of the benefits of this place being so low key and one of the few places in Los Angeles to embrace integration is that the patrons may give a shit, but they’re not here to swarm a celebrity; they’re here to drink, eat and listen to the gorgeous jazz singer on the smoky stage.

“Table for two, please.” Marilyn says. The man behind the stand gives the both of us a curious look; Marilyn laughs, presses close to me and says, “This is my husband; we’d like place near the dance floor if that’s alright with you.”

“Your husb—certainly. Right this way, Miss Monroe.”

“Husband?” I shoot her a look, but she only laughs. Again, we’re playing tonight—the last night we’ll be together. I’m not going to put the brakes on because there’s only hours left, and then we’ll part ways as just two people who spent some time together.

“Eat up, Jimmy.”

“Don’t have the money for it, darlin’.”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you I was paying?”

“That doesn’t offend you?”

“I don’t mind; I’m not women’s lib.”

“I am.”

“By that you mean you’ve liberated a lot of women.”

I raise my eyes, leaning against the comfortable back of my booth seat. The whole lounge smells like cigarette smoke and delicious food. Marilyn’s eyes are sparkling with blind excitement—as if she’s just as certain as I am that this whole thing is a big hurrah for the both of us.

“Sure have,” I say finally.

“I think that only a man can liberate a woman. I guess that makes me old fashioned. Like I said, this next big decade, whatever it brings, isn’t going to have time for me.”

“Good thing there’s the cabin, right?”

“Exactly. With our two sons and our daughter. I’ll name the first boy—we’ll both name the second—and you can name our little girl.”

“What’s our firstborn son?”

“How about Benjamin? That sounds nice—strong but still goodhearted. Benjamin Howlett. Our second born—how about I pick the middle name and you pick the first?”

I think for a second, remembering back to when I parachuted into Auschwitz. “Steve’s not too blue-collar for you, is it?”

“Steve’s a lovely name. Like Captain America. Steve Monroe Howlett. Now it’s your turn. Give our little girl something special, Jimmy.”

“Laura.”

“Like the movie?”

I nod, and raise the tumbler of whisky I ordered. “One of the best.”

“Laura. I like that. Laura Jean Howlett. Perfect. Enough history from both our sides to make a nice little family.”

I keep waiting for her to fall apart; I’m about to because, again, what she’s saying sounds so believable. I’m here with her, after all—I’ve slept with her in my arms, an impossible feat for most people—after that running away and having that family is in the realm of possibility.

But again, it can’t happen because of what we both are; she’s wayward, and I’m not even a man at times.

She keeps the bright eyes and the smiles on all through dinner. The band plays on and the house gets packed, a combination of New Year’s Eve and the rumor that there’s someone famous around. Of course, nobody bothers us—even if they do think to come up to our table, they turn tail the second they see just how big and broad I am.

We laugh; we eat, drink and make merry; we play footsie under the table, again pretending like we’re two kids out on a date.

Midnight gets closer and closer; Marilyn, tired of the food and the sparkling apple juice, takes me by the wrist some time after eleven and leads me onto the dance floor.

“I don’t know ‘bout this, darlin’.”

“It’s just a dance, Jimmy.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Nobody here does.” She leads my hand to her waist, puts her hand on my shoulder and pulls herself close. “All those professionals suck the joy out of dancing. But you just have to do it, baby. Just let it lead you.”

I want to tell her to do the same with her acting—that she doesn’t need Stanislavsky or Strasberg. She just needs to do that thing that breathes within her—that always did.

But this isn’t something I’m about to ruin.

We stay together as the band plays on; she makes me smile more than once. Well after the New Year has been rung in, and the dancers start dispersing from the floor, we stay together, our bodies moving as the song of the jazz siren winds down to something slow and intimate.

Again that thing comes into her eyes—she knows that it’s going to be over in a matter of hours. She leans her head on my shoulders, and I press my cheek to her.

The song makes my skin prickle, the singer inflicting all the longing and pain that exists between Marilyn and I.

“ _Hold me close, while we kiss…let me linger in heaven like this…love is often over too fast…make it last…make it last…”_

God, how I want to. I want this to be the rest of my life, even if I have to tell her what it is that I am. She’s done something to me, changed me the way a person is supposed to be changed—for better and for worse, with the better healing all the cuts and scrapes of the worse.

But it can’t.

It never could.

She trembles in my arms; I know she’s trying hard not to cry. She wants it as badly as I do, if not more so. I’m used to the loneliness—I hunger for it because it can only hurt me so much. She doesn’t know where to go half the time—doesn’t know if the virtuous friend will become a vulture the second she turns her back.

“ _Let the flame linger long…let the fire burn longer and slow…till this moment is lost to the past…make it last…make it last…”_

I get it then—I haven’t given her reason to think I’d ever hurt her. Even though causing pain has checkered my history—even though she only has a cursory understanding of just how much it has checkered my history—she isn’t frightened that I’ll ever do something to cause her harm of any kind. She’s so determined to blame herself, because in her mind taking the blame will put everyone else at ease.

It’s not fair, and I let myself think I can save her, just for a moment.

The dance floor is empty except the two of us now.

She turns those big blue eyes on me; a tear lines her angelic face. I brush it away with my thumb, and she shivers at the contact.

_“If love stays on…my fears will fade…and with each new dawn…I'll start with my heart unafraid…”_

Slowly, knowing it’s damning us both, I kiss her. Softly, gently, trying to prove to the unkind universe that we’ll be okay—trying to give something up there a hint that now is the time for one of us to pluck up our courage and admit that we want to make that fantasy a reality—fuck, I’d even take someone coming in and offering us a way out, no matter how melodramatic.

But it doesn’t happen.

It never can.

Marilyn sighs, and presses her face against me again as the song, and this whole holiday, finally comes to a close.

“ _Till this moment is lost to the past…make it last…make it last…”_


	9. Chapter 9

She stays in my bed that night, even though it kills us both. The part of me still hardwired for primitive thought wonders if this’ll be it—when we both cross that line. It’d be so easy; we’re both uncovered and sleeping in our skins. But I know that making that leap is too crass—would sully what this means.

When I wake up with cold California winter light coming through my window, she’s not in the bed. I shower, dress and wander into the kitchen. She’s not there, even though there’s a fresh pot of coffee made.

I find her in the living room; her suitcases already at her side. She’s taking down the Christmas tree, her eyes distant. I wonder if she’s taken something, but when she turns that radiant, heartbreaking smile on me, I don’t give a damn if she did.

There’s still a little bit of time allowed to us.

I kneel on the floor next to her.

“Marty’s going to be here in a while to take me to the airport,” she tells me. “I don’t think he’d like finding this place with the memory of other people still here.”

“What a Scrooge.”

“Holidays _are_ over now, Jimmy.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I thought you didn’t care for them?”

“They grew on me this year—or is it last year, now?”

She smiles, but then lapses into silence that I can’t stand. I can tell that she’s terrified of leaving another place for somewhere unknown.

Our hands touch when we both reach for a little glass angel left on the branches of our tree. Our eyes meet, and I see that naked want in her.

In a rush, she says, “Jimmy, please…don’t you think that maybe we could run. 

I shake my head, that protective wolf biting at my insides. “We can’t, darlin’. It’s too complicated.”

She sighs, then squares her shoulders in resolve. “Just a dream, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Here.” She plucks the angel off the tree, hurries into her bedroom, and comes back a moment later. She drops the angel into my hand, only now its’ got a length of silver chain threaded through it. “I didn’t really get you anything for Christmas.”

“Neither did I.”

“Actually, yes you did.”

“By that logic, you got me something to.”

“Damn it, Jimmy, just take it.” She laughs a little. “At the very least, you can hawk the chain.”

I hold her gaze as I drop it over my head.

“Not going to do that, darlin’.”

She inhales, looking around the living room, and then starts in on the tree again. It takes only a minute to take it down and put it back in the cardboard box that it came in.

When there’s nothing left of the holidays, Marilyn sighs, gets to her feet, and brushes off her pants. I can see the brave face she’s trying so hard to put on shatter as she looks my way.

“Oh God,” she whispers, “there isn’t enough time.”

She knows it as well as I do, but not quite as well—after all, her ears aren’t attuned for the sign of approach; she can’t hear the crunch of tires from far down the driveway. But I can, and again, I want nothing more than to throw her over my shoulder and run for the hills.

But I settle for taking her into my arms, holding her close as she starts to unravel again. I don’t know what to say—don’t know if I can even voice it from how tight my throat is. I want to scream at how unfair this all is, and I find it kind of fucked up that I just spent a holiday supposed to commemorating the birth of some kind of just and fair thing known as God.

I hear the engine before she does; I hear the door open and close before she does.

She looks me in the eye again, then quickly brushes the tears away as Marty’s voice calls out: “Marilyn! Ready to go?”

“I’m ready.” But she’s not—neither of us is. She steps close to me, not caring that Marty’s already following her voice to the living room. Her lips brush my ear, and she whispers four words that might as well be an I love you.

“Don’t forget me, Logan.”

Then she’s out of my arms, down the hall and grabbing her suitcases. Marty makes his graceful entrance a second later. He stands there, arms folded, and gives me a cursory nod; but I’m too blindsided by what she said to even pretend like I notice him.

When Marilyn re-appears, she has the veil on—the wiggle and the confidence and the smile. She’s cordial, acts tired, and could she please just get to the car because she really is exhausted; and of course Captain Howlett was nothing but a gentleman and a credit both his sex and station.

“Was he? Really? Good, good.” Marty seems to buy it all. “My car’s all ready and waiting. Captain Howlett, you can find the hotel where you picked up the rental, yeah? Just leave it with the valet.”

I can’t say anything; my eyes are fixed on her. She hasn’t looked back at me once, that iron rod down her spine keeping her straight and determined. I can tell that she’s screaming on the inside, though—I can tell, because it’s exactly what I’m doing.

 _Turn around. Please turn around so I can remember you—I need to know that this was real_.

Marty holds the front door open for her. She’s across the threshold, and one second from being nothing more than the worst pain I’ve ever felt, when she finally looks back—the light makes her hair look like an angel’s crown, but I know she’s not an angel—just a woman, the way I’m not a man…just a beast pretending.

Her eyes fill with longing…and then the door shuts.

I want to tear it off its hinges—to run to her, jump in the driver’s side and leave this place behind for the both of us. The knowledge that I can’t makes rage like I’ve never felt pump through me, and I turn away, needing something to distract myself before the beast comes out of its cage.

“You behaved yourself, huh?”

Marty’s still watching me; I want to slice his neck off.

I can’t even remember how to speak English, so I just grunt a response.

I hear him rustle in his coat.

“Got your reward money here, Captain Howlett. And the nice big bonus I promised you. She seems happy, healthy and untouched, if you’ll pardon my saying so.” 

No. I don’t fucking pardon his saying so. He doesn’t care about her—doesn’t know her the way I do. I pace around the living room, my secondary sense of smell overpowering me—she’s all over the place, and it’s making me want to bark.

“Captain Howlett…your money.”

I turn to him, barely keeping the growl in my throat. Marty takes a hasty step back—he’s got an envelope bulging with dollar bills in his hand, and a smaller one next to it. 

I snatch it from his hands, because it’s what he’s expecting, and I know that if I take it, he’ll leave.

Leave with her.

Marty narrows his eyes.

“Point of advice, Captain: don’t hang onto it. Find yourself a good dame, make some rugrats, and put this all behind you.”

I don’t look at him; I squeeze the packet of money so tight that my knuckles crack. 

Marty sighs, as if he feels sorry for me. He puts his hat back on his head, makes for the front door, and then turns around.

“If that car isn’t at the hotel in an hour, you’re toast. Get me?”

“Got it,” I snarl.

Marty shakes his head again, then closes the door. I hear him crunch across the gravel; her him open and close his car door—his car, where Marilyn is waiting, ready to once again be thrown to the wolves. My whole body shakes, my mind racing with the lost possibility of us. The engine guns, the tires squeal over gravel and dirt, and then it’s gone, down the driveway.

She’s gone.

I’m alone again.

The roar escapes me before I can stop it. I throw the packet of money from me; my claws slice through my skin—the skin that Marilyn had so needlessly tried to heal that night before Christmas. I slice through the packet, through the money that seems so profane to have received in return for something that’s left me feeling so battered about. Likely thousands of dollars fall in tatters to the carpet like snow.

It’s only when I realize that I just tore through the chance to go back home—the one thing I’d wanted before I’d been landed with this little outfit—that I calm down. My claws sink back into my hands, and I stand there, breathing heavily.

Light glances off something around my neck.

Even though she gave it to me moments ago, I’d almost forgotten about the little glass angel on its chain of silver.

It’s so small, so delicate, but still strong—just like her.

I wrap my fingers around it.

 _I won’t forget you_ , I think as I breathe in deeply. _I’ll never forget you, darlin’._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that writing about Marilyn Monroe can become seriously heavy and depressing? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. 
> 
> Let me know what you think.


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